Events
22-24 October 2025
Co-organized by Gregg Mitman and Emmanuelle Roth
Hotspots of Concern: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Biodiversity and Health
A Workshop Sponsored by European Reseach Council Advanced Grant, “Fragments of the
Forest,” and LMU’s Center for Advanced Studies, Rachel Carson Center for Environment and
Society, and Munich Science Communication Lab
Center for Advanced Studies, LMU (Germany)
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3-6 April 2024
Co-Organized by Gregg Mitman and Emmanuelle Roth
Extraction and Its Ecologies: Inhabiting Fragmented Landscapes of Health.
A Workshop Sponsored by European Research Council Advanced Grant, “Fragments of the Forest” and the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society (RCC)
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Presentations
27 January 2026
Emmanuelle Roth and Gregg Mitman
“Visual Tailings: Excess and Nostalgia in the Mining of
Mount Nimba, Liberia.”
Anthropology Lecture Series
University of Bayreuth (Germany)
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19 November 2025
Shadrach Kerwillain
“Forest Resources in Liberia.”
Africa Talks Environment: Umweltkrisen im afrikanischen Kontext
Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Germany)
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22-24 October 2025
Gregg Mitman, Emmanuelle Roth, and Christos Lynteris
Keynote lecture at the workshop “Hotspots of Concern: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Biodiversity and Health”
Center for Advanced Studies LMU (Germany)
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16-17 June 2025
Gregg Mitman and Emmanuelle Roth
“Ecological fables, Ecologies of blame: Zoonosis on the
Liberia-Guinea border”
Workshop “Zoonosis as a Historical and Anthropological Question”
University of St Andrews (UK)
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23-24 April 2025
Emmanuelle Roth and Gregg Mitman
“Visual Tailings: Memories of extraction in Nimba, Liberia.”
Health, Environment and Anthropology Conference (HEAT)
Durham University, Durham (UK)
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23-24 April 2025
Moussa Douno, “The Boom-and-Bust Patterns of Biomedical Research in Bong County’s Lassa Belt of Liberia”.
Health, Environment and Anthropology Conference (HEAT)
Durham University, Durham, (UK)
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12-14 December 2024
Moussa Douno
“Blood Collection or Contractual Exchange? Lassa Fever Research and Extraction in a ‘Lassa Belt’ of Liberia”.
John Fayiah
Epidemiologies of Visibility and Neglect: Disease Ecologies on Liberia’s Concession Enclaves, 1920 – 1980
Shadrach Kerwillain
“Protecting El Dorado: Tension between Conservation and Local Livelihood in a Biodiversity Hotspot.”
Emmanuelle Roth
“Ecologies of Extraction: Beneath Extractivism in Mount Nimba, Liberia.”
African Studies Association Meeting
Chicago, IL (USA)
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11 December 2024
Moussa Douna, John Fayiah, Shadrach Kerwillain, Gregg Mitman, Emmanuelle Roth
“History in the ‘Hot Zone’: Disease Ecologies and Extraction in West Africa
The Remarque Institute
New York City, NY
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6 November 2024
Emmanuelle Roth
“Echoes of Ebola: Bats, Virus Hunters, and Epidemic Origins in Guinea.”
Medical Anthropology Seminar
London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (UK)
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18-20 June 2024
Moussa Douno
“Blood Collection or Contractual Exchange?
Understanding Lassa Fever Research in Rural Liberia.”
Medical Anthropology Young Scholars (MAYS) Annual Meeting, Critical Anthropology and Global Health: Challenges and Possibilities. Bologna (Italy).
16-21 June 2024
Shadrach Kerwillain
“Opportunities and Challenges to Co-Management in a Biodiversity Hotspot: Insights from Liberia.”
World Biodiversity Forum, Davos (Switzerland)
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10-13 June 2024
Shadrach Kerwillain
“Beware the Perils of Silver Bullets: Tension and Disconnect in Tackling Biodiversity Loss and Zoonosis Through One Health.”
Political Ecology Network conference (POLLEN24) Lund (Sweden).
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21 March 2024
Gregg Mitman and Emmanuelle Roth
“On Fragments and Hotspots: Containment and Care in the Extraction of Mount Nimba.”
Third Environmental Humanities Lecture, University of Pécs (Hungary)
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29 February 2024
Emmanuelle Roth and Gregg Mitman
“On Fragments and Hotspots: Containment and Care in the Extraction of Mount Nimba.”
SHS Health, Mind and Society and UCL Anthropocene, University College London (UK).
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5 December 2023
Gregg Mitman
“Ebola in a Stew of Fear: From Urban Wet Markets to the Guinean Forests of West Africa,”
Center for Metropolitan Studies, Technische Universität Berlin.
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21 November 2023
Emmanuelle Roth & Gregg Mitman
“Fragments of the Forest: Infrastructures of Extraction and Endangerment in the Making of a Hotspot,”
Division of History of Science, Technology, and Environment, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm (Sweden).
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2-4 November 2023
Emmanuelle Roth
“Figures de la zoonose en temps de crise : Préparer à Ebola après Ebola en Guinée.”
Congress of the French Association of Ethnology and Anthropology, Paris (France).
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26 October 2023
Emmanuelle Roth & Gregg Mitman
“Fragments of the Forest: Infrastructures of Extraction and Endangerment in the Making of a West African Hotspot.”
African Anthropology Seminar, University of Oslo (Norway).
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20-21 October 2023
Shadrach Kerwillain & Gregg Mitman
“Disease as a Silver Lining? The Troubled History of Biodiversity and Health in the Upper Guinean Forests of West Africa.”
Integrating the History and Philosophy of Biodiversity: Narratives of Diversity, Extinction, Conflict and Value, Museum of Natural Sciences, Brussels (Belgium).
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13-14 October 2023
Emmanuelle Roth
“The ‘truth about Ebola’: Knowing and doing zoonosis in post-outbreak Guinea.”
Workshop on Zoonoses, multi-species transmission of pathogens and pandemic preparedness, University of Bergamo (Italy).
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17-22 September 2023
Emmanuelle Roth
“Viral surveillance in bats and its impact after the 2013-2016 Ebola epidemic in West Africa.”
Poster presented at the African Small Mammals Symposium in Swakopmund (Namibia).
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26-28 June 2023
Gregg Mitman
“A Virus and the Forest: Yellow Fever and the Remaking of Alliances Among LivingThings.”
Lead Paper, Making and Unmaking Africa: Global Developments and Environmental Humanities, Osun State University (Nigeria).
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1 June 2023
Gregg Mitman
“Caring for Chimps as Viral Kin.”
Sciences Po, Paris (France).
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18-20 April 2023
Gregg Mitman
“Bloodborne: Chasing Ecologies and Power Across Viral Divides”
Pt. 1 – The Monkey Books
Pt. 2 – Caring for Chimps as Viral Kin
Pt. 3 – Ebola in a Stew of Fear
Lawrence Stone Lectures, Department of History, Princeton University
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11-14 April 2023
“Rescaling One health: Epidemic prevention and its disjunctive futures in West Africa”
Annual conference of the UK Association of Social Anthropologists, London
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21-23 March 2023
“Nimba Offers Opportunities for Scientific Tourism”: Scientific Visions and Temporary Sights in a West African Hotspot
Conference of the Finnish Anthropological Society, Rovaniemi
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21-23 February 2023
Extraire des chauves-souris du Mont Nimba: Infrastructures minières et « points chauds » en Afrique de l’Ouest
Écologie, Santé et Sociétés en Afrique conference, Dakar
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4 November 2022
Gregg Mitman
From the City to the Jungle: The Remaking of Yellow Fever in West Africa
Rural and Agrarian Disease Knowledge workshop, Cambridge University
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8-10 June 2022
Emmanuelle Roth
When epidemic anticipation becomes a job: Understanding, planning, and hoping for Ebola’s return in post-outbreak Guinea
Afterlives of Epidemics conference, University of Oslo
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21-24 April 2022
Emmanuelle Roth
Controlling the Reservoir of Ebola: Shifting Epistemologies of Epidemic ‘Latency’ in the early 21 st century
Annual Conference of the American Association for the History of Medicine, Saratoga Springs